


Blue Skies of Freedom

by HathorAroha



Category: Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Parting Ways Ending (Life is Strange 2), TW: covid mention, life is feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26491981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HathorAroha/pseuds/HathorAroha
Summary: Sean Diaz knows he can never see Daniel again, nor know if the latter is still alive.
Kudos: 6





	Blue Skies of Freedom

Sean doesn’t know if Daniel has survived the pandemic, and perhaps he never will, and perhaps this is why he still sends letters, still sends photos, because he doesn’t ever want to face the possibility that he hadn't. He hangs on to hope that Daniel lives, happy and healthy at the Reynolds’, best friends with Chris, in the USA. He hopes Daniel is safe from the horrors of a land festering with evil malice, a dark continent that had threatened to take his life and his brother.

People tell him Daniel’s probably dead anyway—it’s the USA, what should he expect? They insist Sean’s in denial, because in what world is Daniel safe in the fucking United States? They insist he’s living in an illusion of his own making. He should wake up to reality. To a world that will be no less hateful toward Daniel than it is to Sean.

Sean doesn’t give a fuck. If choosing to hope he lives in a world where Daniel is still alive and safe with the Reynolds makes him foolish, then so be it. Let him have this, let him think he hasn’t lost his younger brother like he had his father—doesn’t he deserve at least this drop of hope? If having faith Daniel is okay makes him deluded, at least he has that one hope to go on living day by day.

It’s not like he can go back to the USA anyway.

It’s not like he wants to, ever, even if it means forsaking his family and friends.

And, at least, staying in Mexico, he can convince himself that everyone he had ever loved had made it to the other side of the pandemic—at least he knows Finn and Cassidy and Hannah made it, but it fucking hurts knowing he’ll never know if Lyla made it either. He doesn’t even know if the Reynolds made it, nor Chris, nor Jake and his sister Sarah-Lee, nor Karen, nor anyone at Away.

Does he even want to know?

Maybe this is why he never goes back, he stays beyond the border, his feet in the warm sand, drinking cocktails, and enjoying a stunning beach view. Just as Finn had always wanted. In the bright sunshine, cloaked in eternally blue skies that never fade in their beauty. _Azul cielo._ It is the colour of freedom in a world where he doesn’t have to run from bloodthirsty hunters. It is the colour of Finn’s shining eyes when he had made it to Mexico, staying for a good time with Sean. It is the colour of warm water wrapping around his body when he skinny dips in the ocean at the height of day when the heat is at its fiercest.

In Sean’s _Matrix_ , he chooses to swallow the blue pill. _Azul._ The colour of blissful, perhaps-foolish hope, of choosing to dream that somehow, somewhere, Daniel is okay and Lyla is alive, still kicking injustice in the face, making American society face its bloodied history of white supremacy. He saw her briefly on the news back in 2020, raw rage and fury, one of the many faces in the numerous Black Lives Matter marches around the USA. She is going to change the world. He has to believe in that too.

Is he selfish if he wants to stay here, in the land of freedom he had yearned for, his own promised land, having crossed the metaphorical Red Sea from a land of cruelty into a safer country where he could be free? If it makes him selfish, so be it. Then again…

Wasn’t it selfish of Daniel too, to suddenly change his mind, want to turn back, want to stay in the USA? If staying in the USA made Daniel selfish, then staying in Mexico meant that, perhaps, deep down, Sean was a selfish man too.

And if he were honest with himself, deep down, he was okay with that. At least he wasn’t running, wasn’t sleeping under bridges, wasn’t shivering in a rundown cabin in the middle of nowhere in winter, wasn’t always looking over his shoulder, and wasn’t always suspicious of every face he met. Here, he trusted people who looked like him, who spoke like him, who had a culture familiar to him from his father’s stories. Here, he didn’t have to worry about shelter, didn’t have to worry about shivering in the snow, didn’t have to worry about police being on his ass. He spoke virtually no English these days, except in the occasional letter to Daniel at the Reynolds’—if they were even alive, if they were even still in Beaver Creek.

How could this ever be a bad ending for him? Bittersweet, certainly, knowing he’ll never know if his photos and letters are being sent to a deceased brother, to deceased grandparents, but bad? Bad would be if he was fatally shot, choking on his own blood right as he crossed the border. Or, worse, it would be if Daniel had been shot—again—dying in the car seat next to him, through his own selfish actions.

Not that his actions were selfish—he’d had enough of all the fucking shit he’d suffered through in the USA; he hadn’t made it all the way to the border just to give up. Just to let himself fall into the hands of monsters as cruel—or crueler—than any king in history. Just to let Daniel fall into the hands of police—he’d wanted a better life for both of them.

But Daniel had made his choice.

He had chosen to stay in the USA, chosen to stay in that terrible land of cruelties.

And Sean had been helpless to do anything to stop him.

He had never felt so helpless in his life that day, knowing from then on, he would be alone except for the friends he’d make in Mexico, or for Cassidy and Finn passing through on their individual journeys. But then again, as Brody had once told him, “ _there’s a difference between alone and lonely…”_ , and now Sean really understood what he had meant. He was _alone_ without his American family and friends, but he wasn’t _lonely_. Sure, at first he had felt lonely, but it hadn’t lasted long once he had started making friends who would keep him company through thick and thin. Friends who would stay strong by his side, who would rib his terrible karaoke singing, who would pile together in his car to go on random road trips around the country and beyond to the brim of South America itself, from Argentina to Chile.

Sean wouldn’t have it any other way.

Except once a year, every 11th April: Daniel’s birthday.

The last time he’d ever been there for Daniel’s birthday, the latter had been turning nine. Their father had been still alive. Everything had still been more than okay. Life had still been…normal. When normal used to be getting jitters over his crush for a girl at a party, skating with Lyla and the crew, fighting with his little brother on a daily basis, enduring his father’s dad jokes, and…

This was his new normal now. A new normal where Daniel chose—that was what he did, he had _chosen_ —to stay in the USA. A new normal where Sean could never go back to the USA, could not know—if ever—if Daniel had survived the pandemic of 2020, where he had friends to hit the road whenever the desire hit them, where he was a free man. At least everywhere else on the planet but in the USA.

A new normal where he would never be there on Daniel’s birthday for a long time, if ever again.

Where he could never wish him happy birthday in person except in his sketches, in his head, in his heart.

Where he could never watch him grow up, experience the ups and downs of teenhood, of finding a new girlfriend (or boyfriend), of dating for the first time, of experiencing his first kiss, of graduating from high-school, of seeing him go to college for the first time.

Where Daniel could never assure Sean he was okay, he was alive, he was thriving, he was still best friends with Chris Eriksen.

Where Daniel could never prank Sean with his powers, just to tick him off.

Where Daniel could never come to him after a nightmare about Lisbeth.

Where Daniel could never come to him for comfort or just a chat, like he had so often done after Havenpoint.

Where Daniel knew Sean was alive…but Sean could never know if Daniel was too.

Did he know Sean didn’t know whether he was alive or dead?

Did he know?

 _Did_ he know?

_Did he?_

Did he ever lay awake at night, trying not to think how Sean would never really know he was still alive?

Did he ever jolt awake with the realisation Sean couldn’t tell him where he was now, except as hints through photos? Look, it’s the edge of the Amazon Rainforest! Look, it’s the mountains of Argentina! Look how blue the sky is! Look how beautiful the world is, where he is a free man, everywhere, except…

Except in a country that would hunt Sean down were he to put his address on the back of an envelope.

Except in a country that would never cease in its desire to throw Sean behind bars, never hesitate to beat him to a pulp again, would stare with empty and dry eyes as they shot him without mercy.

Except in a country that would somehow instantly know where he is, were he to phone Daniel, ever, no matter where he was. One video call through whatever video calling app was the hot shit these days, and the USA would hunt him down, tie him up, throw him into prison.

Throw him into hell.

Fuck that.

Especially _that._

 _That_ bit.

The bit where he couldn’t know, couldn’t check if Daniel was doing okay, couldn’t talk to him in person, nor over a payphone, nor a video call. He couldn’t even slip a permanent address inside the envelope, because for sure, Daniel would write him back. Sean was _sure_ he would, there was no way Daniel would never write back, ever.

So, Sean can’t do that. Not yet. Not now. No.

He will have to wait.

Maybe five more years. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.

Maybe when he’s old and grey and cataracts is blinding his remaining eye.

Maybe when he’s on his deathbed.

Maybe in the next lifetime where the wolf brothers could _really_ grow up together in a safer country, in a safer time, in a safer normal. 

Maybe never.


End file.
